Matcha Ceremonial Green

First-harvest tea leaves, picked in spring and shaded for weeks beforehand to deepen their color and sweeten their character, then stone-ground on granite mills to a talc-fine powder the color of new grass. This is ceremonial grade, meant to be whisked and drunk whole rather than steeped and discarded — the tea itself, leaf and all, not an infusion of it. Matcha grew out of the Zen monasteries of medieval Japan, where monks drank it before long stretches of seated meditation. It is traditionally valued for a calm, sustained alertness, the clear, unhurried focus the monks were after, distinct from the quick spike and crash of coffee. The tea ceremony that formed around it treats the whisking itself as a kind of quiet discipline. Whisk half a teaspoon into a splash of hot, not boiling, water, working the bamboo whisk briskly until a fine, pale foam rises. Grassy, gently sweet, faintly of the sea, best taken slowly rather than gulped. Matcha carries natural caffeine along with its calming reputation; it is a beverage, not a supplement, and no claim is made beyond the traditional one of steady, unhurried alertness. Thirty grams per tin, ceremonial grade, first harvest. Grassy, sweet, and faintly of the sea.